


Between the hour and the age

by Selena



Category: 18th Century CE Frederician RPF, 18th Century CE RPF
Genre: Drama & Romance, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Hilarity Ensues, Love/Hate, M/M, Pen Pals, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23330506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selena/pseuds/Selena
Summary: In 1736, Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia starts corresponding with the most famous writer of his time: Voltaire. Forty explosive years, scandals, arguments, reconciliations and a lot of spilled ink later, they still haven't gotten tired of each other. Frederick the Great and Voltaire in sixteen steps: a Franco-Prussian romance.
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Voltaire (Writer), Voltaire (Writer) & Others, Émilie du Châtelet/Voltaire (Writer)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 21





	Between the hour and the age

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mildred_of_midgard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildred_of_midgard/gifts), [raspberryhunter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/gifts).



I.

It begins and ends with letters, because of course it does. The one arriving at Cirey has gone through more hands than it should, evidently, has been opened and resealed, which means it’s worth reading. Truly, censors and policemen are doing half of the critic’s job these days. On one level, they needn’t have bothered; the fervent admiration the letter expresses is not that unusual to find among Voltaire’s mail these days. Of course, he gets other letters, too, many other letters cursing him, and he hasn’t forgotten the _lettre de cachet_ responsible for sending him to the Bastille. Twice. No, but what is truly unusual about this latest message is that it comes from a bona fide prince, not one of the byblows of the last two regents of France but the heir to that kingdom somewhere in the east of Germany where the Huguenots went to after Louis XIV threw them out of France. It’s always good to have a bolthole somewhere, isn’t it just, when the ruler of one’s country wants to appease the Church.

So the Crown Prince of Prussia writes, most flatteringly, and quite more eloquently than some princes of the blood in France Voltaire could name. As, for example, the one who had him beat up by his servants when he couldn’t best Voltaire in conversation. What had truly been humiliating about that experience was the aftermath; the fact that none of Voltaire’s various noble friends had seen it fit to do anything about this. He’d been good enough to grace their salons with his wit, but when it came down to it, he had no more rights in their eyes than their pet dog, definitely fit for kicking if that was what it pleased a prince to do.

„What do they call a bandage on a wound long since healed, my dear?“ he asks Émilie, who is busy calculating infinity, or, more likely, how on earth they can afford visiting Versailles again this year, and, not waiting for an answer, continues, „I think they might call it Prussian Roulette.“

He’s heard about this young man before, now that he thinks about it. The father is one of those comic ogres out of fairy tales and bad British plays. Ho, hum, here I come. People talk about him sniggeringly in the salons, a shouting little man, ruler over some German sand, fancying himself a King but living like the most ordinary of creatures, in a diet of beer, pipe smoke and piety. The one thing no one finds funny, though, is that this man has some forty thousand soldiers at his disposal, and a well-filled treasury. France has probably more soldiers, but it also has huge debts. And the soldiers are badly clothed; Voltaire, who has visited what passed for a battle at Philippsburg just two or so years ago, has had the opportunity to watch some less than glorious action.

The other thing no one finds funny about the current King of Prussia is that he started this decade by locking his son up and coming close to executing him for the crime of wanting to travel. Travel to France, of course, for where else would sensible people wish to go? That must have been this same young man now writing with such readerly devotion.

Well, it was possible to survive one’s odious father. As the son of Monsieur Arouet from Paris has reason to know. Voltaire wonders whether the prince has considered a name change as well, at that time he wished to travel, something to recreate oneself and leave the burden of unwanted heritage behind. What kind of anagram could be formed by using the letters FRÉDERIC?

Not that he spells it that way. The signature at the bottom says „Federic“, rather. The rest of the letter has some original spelling as well, but the words themselves: well put.

„My dear,“ he tells Émilie, after informing her who the letter was from and what it said „we might have found a new patron.“

She raises a sceptical eyebrow. „I thought the father is supposed to be the most miserly monarch of Europe?“

„He won’t live forever“, Voltaire says, though in truth he has no idea how young or old the man is, beyond the fact that he has evidently produced an adult son. Just look at the late Sun King, though. Who outlived his son and grandson both, and lived long enough to declare his great grandson his successor.

Still. He will reply. One should never discourage devoted readers: this is the first and most important rule any writer needs to obey.

* * *

II.

The Crown Prince of Prussia seems to be set on exploring ever new ways of declaring Voltaire’s divinity through the next few years. This is all very well, but what makes it interesting is that he also manages to avoid doing the one thing Voltaire has rather blatantly hinted he should do: invite both Émilie and Voltaire to that palace in the countryside he’s describing as his personal sanctuary for the arts. Oh, he’s courteous enough to regularly include compliments to Émilie in his letters to Voltaire. He even writes back when she writes to him herself, though far slower than to her lover. But that Prince who is seemingly so open, to devoted, still is as apt at avoiding what they want him to say as if he were a courtier at Versailles.

„Maybe he does not love the sciences as much as he loves literature,“ Voltaire says.

Émilie crinkles her nose. „Or maybe he just does not like women.“

This could be the case. The Prince’s idea of a gift to Voltaire is a golden knob for a cane showing the portrait of Socrates, with an inscription presenting himself as Alcibiades.

„I suppose that makes me Xanthippe“, Émilie comments. „Which I find less worrying than the fact Socrates ended up on trial and forced to drink hemlock while Alcibiades amused himself soldiering in other countries. Should I have the hemlock ready once you get arrested again?“

He catches her ink-stained fingers and kisses them. There is a reason why he adores her, years after the fervor of young love has passed. She’s as polite as the Crown Prince is when the young man sends a friend of his with more gifts and the request for the most outrageous of all works Voltaire has written so far, _La Pucelle d’Orleans_ , not in print anywhere and only a manuscript of which he has read excerpts to friends and has allowed solely passages to be copied. Émilie, all smiles, informs the Prince’s messenger that she is in possession of the manuscript. And of the key to the box it is locked up in. Which she has no intention to hand over.

„But if Monsieur de Voltaire wishes it…“ the Prussian protests.

„Monsieur der Voltaire also wishes for better laws, just trials, a thorough reform of all French institutions and a peaceful existence of countries which love to conduct war with another“, Émilie retorts. „Some wishes will have to be fulfilled first.“

„Monsieur!“ the Prince’s messenger appeals, now to turning directly to him again.

„Who am I to gainsay a lady so determined to protect me?“ Voltaire comments. „I’ll write my apologies to your good prince.“

Once the Prussian has left, with as tender and apologetic a letter as Voltaire can muster, Émilie asks him why he bothers at all. She has an intriguing suspicion: that the Crown Prince of Prussia wants a copy of the _Pucelle_ not so much because he wants to delect himself by Voltaire’s mockery of France’s sainted maid but because he knows very well a publication could result in another _lettre de cachet_ to Voltaire again, who would then be forced to either reacquaint himself with the Bastille or flee France. Possibly flee France for Prussia.

„The same young man in his last letter chided me for listing Machiavelli as one of the great minds of his age?“ Voltaire retorts. „He should have such an inner scoundrel? Why, that would make him…“  
„Somewhat like you?“ Émilie suggests, and he kisses her again.

Somewhat later, she returns to the question. Why keep corresponding with the Prince, for years now? His compliments might be satisfying, but not _that_ unique, and it’s time consuming, time that could be used to create, not to flatter some German with a title.

„Yours is a mind like the great Newton’s“, Voltaire says, trying to be as truthful for her as he can be. „You seek to explain the world by asking why, and are not content with any explanation but that which science offers. My own question to the world, I find, as the years progress, is simply this: Why not? Now I pose it through my writings, to be sure. But in all the years since I’ve taken up the pen, has there something truly changed? Are our laws any less unjust? Have any of the mighty learned anything but to adopt the occasional quote? They have not. Now here is a man who _will_ one day sit on a throne. Not of France, true, and it is not a large kingdom he’ll have, but it is of some influence. He could truly become the first prince to be what Plato has dreamt of. A philosopher King, a just ruler with just laws, a model to the world. Real change.“

Émilie frowns. „Correct me if I am wrong,“ she remarks, „but did not Plato wish all poets banished from his ideal state, for the chaos they bring, which is inherent in poetry?“

No danger of that, Voltaire thinks, given the prince’s habit of peppering his letters with verses. He’d have to banish himself, Fréderic would. Still. He might fall short of the lofty ideals he proclaims, true. It is a gamble. And Voltaire has always been a gambler at heart.

* * *

III.

When the old ogre – who is, in fact, just six years older than Voltaire himself is – dies, Voltaire is busy getting the new King’s manuscript arguing against Machiavelli in a shape ready for printing. His Alcibiades from the Prussian sands writes to him immediately, and the letters are as admiring as ever, but there’s a new tone added to the sweet complimentary concert. _The divine Émilie is for all her divinity just the arm decoration of the Newtonian Apollo,_ writes the newly crowned Frederic, Federic or just F, and _it is my friend Voltaire whom I wish to see._

At this point, it doesn’t come out of the blue; Émilie shrugs, but you can tell a part of her is still hurt. Not just by the insult, which isn’t new to her; by the fact Voltaire still wants to see the King as well. Which he does. Now, he admits, more than ever. One can get tired of being served only sweetness; throw in some spice, though, and the dish becomes appetizing again.

He encounters the King for the first time in some town not that far from the border, where he went after an aborted attempt to visit France incognito, which had ended in the discovery of his true identity and a night passed in arrest. The new ruler of Prussia is in less than Apollonian shape when Voltaire finds him, sick with a fever, in a dressing gown. Voltaire, who has been plagued with sicknesses since he was born and thus fancies himself as something of an expert, takes the royal pulse and uses the opportunity to take a closer look. No Apollo, no; a small man, currently sweating. But he has startling blue eyes and a way of looking at you that seems to exclude anyone else in the room.

„So you are here, at last“, he says. „My Socrates.“ After this tender greeting, he adds, with a sharp smile: „If you’d come sooner, when I was in Strassbourg, we might have been arrested as impostors together. For who would believe Voltaire to have an actual human shape? I thought you consisted of letters and denials of your presence, Monsieur.“

This, Voltaire later concludes, is the fatal moment when it truly starts, at least as far as he is concerned. He loves admiration as much as the next writer. But what he craves is a challenge. Naturally, he issues one of his own.

„But I am an impostor,“ he cheerfully returns. „Travelling under a name I have invented for myself. Everything about me is invention, Sire, as you must know. Discarding assumptions, creating oneself anew: it is the only way to live.“

Suddenly the King changes Voltaire’s pulse-taking gesture to a grip of his own. His fingers burn with fever and are strong. „Yes,“ he says in his odd French, which is fluent like a native tongue, and yet the rhythm of it is slightly off balance and burdened with a Germanic accent. „It is.“

* * *

IV.

The King’s way of reinventing himself, it turns out, includes invasions of foreign countries. He is not the only young monarch to ascend to the throne that year. So does the late Emperor’s daughter Maria Theresa, the first woman to rule German-speaking territory who is not regent for a son or grandson. Her father has spent his last years trying to buy Europe’s acceptance for this novelty with concession after concession, and has gotten a lot of signatures promising just this, including one from the late Ogre of Prussia, which his son promptly ignores while he marches into her province of Silesia and takes it for himself. The prints of the Dutch presses churning out his book against Machiavelli, argueing the virtues of truthful, morally responsible ruling, are still wet with ink.

„He does have an actor’s timing,“ Voltaire tells Émilie, not knowing whether he’s more appalled or fascinated. As the Emperor’s daughter turns out to be surprisingly resistant to getting robbed and fights back, the increasing number of dead bodies ensure the later outweighs the former. Yet another illness leaves him vexed with himself for overlooking that all of this is not some drama staged for his personal entertainment, that the lives lost are real. Seething, he writes in his next letter to Prussia: _I only touched the Styx with one foot, but I am extremely angry about the number of the poor unfortunates whom I saw transported across this river. Some came from Schärding, the others from Prague or Iglau. Will you and your fellow monarchs never stop ravaging this earth which you claim you want to make happy?_

He gets back a reply sooner rather than later, because in between waging war and, it has to be admitted, reforming the laws of his country, the King, Federic with only one r and twice the sarcasm the Crown Prince showed himself able of, somehow always finds the time to write to him. _You thunder against those who fight for their right with weapons in their hands and armed by their claims; but I remember a time when you, if you had been in possession of an army, would certainly have set it marching against the Desfontaines, the Rousseaus, the van Durens etc. etc. etc._

Maybe Voltaire should not have complained about his enemies in the literary world as fervently has he has done, but then, he did have a potential patron to instruct as to which other writers to support and which annoying pestilences to stay away from. The King of Prusssia might not recall the Crown Prince’s virtuous vows, but he has an excellent memory otherwise.

_Misery and misfortune caused by this are like illnesses of the human body. You may regard the last war as a little attack of an eternal fever which leaves Europe as quickly as it has made Europe shake._

„What a bastard,“ Émilie says, reading this over Voltaire’s shoulder.

„Yes,“ he agrees, wishing he didn’t sound quite as impressed.

* * *

V.

The next time he meets the King in person does not take place in some border town, in an hasty improvisation. It’s three years after their first encounter, and the King receives him properly this time, and provides him with rooms in a variety of royal palaces, since even when not waging war, this King is restless and travelling through his Kingdom. There are parties, and Voltaire gets introduced to some members of the Royal family: the mother, to be precise, for the King’s wife is stored elsewhere along with the furniture from the last regime, it seems; and several of the siblings. These turn out to be more interesting than their public purse draining counterparts in Versailles, if only because they all offer interesting variations of the conundrum that is the King: the fluent, oddly accented French, the sharp humor alternating with an intense need to please and be liked, arrogance intermingled with crushing self doubt if one looks closer, the ability to shed tears over some particularly beautifullly played piece of music in one moment and to blankfacedly ignore a servant’s evident exhaustion and distress in the next. One of the younger sisters offers this mixture combined with a particularly enticing form, and so Voltaire flirts with her, writing her a love poem. She is charming, and princesses tend to end up married to other monarchs, which makes her a potential future patron as well. What he hadn’t expected was to get a poem in return, evidently not written by her but by her royal brother, which seems to argue that he might as well direct his attention to the sibling wearing the crown.

„And did you?“ Émilie asks, when they’re finally reunited in Brussels, where she’s fighting legal battles. She’s a little angry with him for having dragged out his visit to Prussia for as long as he has done.

„I know better than to compete with the various examples of handsome masculinity he surrounds himself with,“ he replies. „Besides, one cannot fake passion in these kind of situations, and the male form has never enticed me. It would have been embarassing.“

„No,“ Émilie says pointedly. „One cannot fake passion.“

It has been a while since they have enjoyed each other’s bodies by now. He still loves her, that wonderful, brilliant mind of hers; he cannot imagine living without her. But her body does not excite him anymore. Habit, he supposes; that is why no poet in history has, after the first rush of love, immortalized the married life. Not that they are married. She has a husband, an agreeable man who lives his own life with his mistresses. She also, whenever she and Voltaire have had a serious argument, has had a habit of resuming her affair with her fellow scientist Maupertuis, but Maupertuis is not available anymore; he’s been lured to Prussia by the King as well, and proved his devotion there by following him into the field, resulting in an embarrassing capture by the Austrians. On the back of an ass. Voltaire is still in a great mood whenever he remembers these details.

„Truly now, you know whom my heart belongs to,“ he says to Émilie.

„Yes, and his name is Voltaire,“ she retorts.

The King shares Émilie’s opinion in this regard. He’s simply indignant that Voltaire left at all, as if a visit hadn’t been all Voltaire had promised in the first place. Letters arrive comparing the two of them to Dido and Aeneas, and really, one has to draw the line somewhere.

Voltaire won’t return to Prussia within Émilie’s life time.

* * *

VI.

Émilie dies on a miserable September day in Lunéville, days after completing her epochal translation of Newton and after having given birth to a child. The child’s father, that example of handsome masculinity, Saint-Lambert, the Marquis her husband, and Voltaire himself are at her side. He has seen death before; but not like this. Never like this.

Going to Prussia follows only naturally, in a way. Prussia has been at peace these recent years, true, but the King is still a master of death. At any rate, there’s no danger he’ll die of childbirth, too. And he’s been unrelenting in his letters, his cajolings, his promises. He even went as far as writing a poem attacking France and publishing it under Voltaire’s name, undoubtedly hoping that it would result in another prison sentence and Voltaire seeking refuge with him. The most insulting thing about it is how close he managed to come to actually imitating Voltaire’s style, and yet how far; he really needed someone to correct his poetry before he put it into print, did Federic.

Still, one should never just bet on one horse, and so Voltaire offers to spy on the King of Prussia on his nation’s behalf. King Louis XV, it has to be said, reacts with less than enthusiasm at this prospect. „Does his majesty doubt I can do it?“ Voltaire asks the French King’s main mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour, whom he has known since she was plain Jeanne Poisson. She is an ally of sorts, but she does have a lamentable tendency of prioritizing her own interests over Voltaire’s.

„Now who would doubt that a master of invention will deliver anything true?“ the Marquise returns. It is thus with less than an official endorsement that Voltaire arrives in Prussia. He finds it hard to care, though. At Versailles, even at the best of times, there are any number of odious people to put up with whose only distinction is their birth. And now, there is also the ghost of Émilie in every corner, Émilie playing cards and counting them in that wonderfully precise brain of hers, Émilie winning and being blazingly alive. At Potsdam, by contrast, the King crowds out any competitive ghosts by the sheer force of his personality, he seems to have gotten the urge to wagw war out of his system, as the last few years have been peaceful and prosperous for his realm, and instead of titled fools, he’s surrounded himself with the most dazzling minds he could find. (Except Émilie’s, always, esxcept Émilie’s. Or any other woman‘s. The King’s table round is as free of women as any monastery.)

„But we could not truly boast of brilliance without you,“ he says, Federic, still not tall, still no less attention drawing for it, wearing the luxurious clothing of a French nobleman in his summer residence that so contrasts with the spartan uniform he wears in public. He smiles at Voltaire, that smile unique to him, mocking them both. „Now that you are here, you must tell me: did you simply run out of excuses not to come?“

„Sire, one thing you’ll never find me bereft of is words of any type.“

„I don’t doubt it.“ Then all irony and mockery vanishes from his face. The King is seventeen years younger than Voltaire, but there are lines in his face now, and he’s aging quickly. And yet, at this very moment, he appears young again, younger even than during their first encounter. It’s a surprising glimpse at the boy he must have been, growing up with the expectation of being denied, thanks the the ogre. There is a vulnerability in his eyes, a longing that demands to be shared. „It means the world to me that you are here“, Federic says. „Truly.“ While speaking, he has taken Voltaire’s hand into his, and now, he kisses it. „You will not leave again, will you?“

„I’m yours, Sire,“ Voltaire replies, which doesn’t answer the question but at this moment feels true nonetheless. Before he can think about it, he kisses the King’s hand as well. Federic’s fingers are those of a soldier, dry and hard, and full of calluses. But they are unresisting.

* * *

VII.

Kings, whatever their outward appearances, share one quality with beautiful women: there is never any lack of competition for their favour. This universal truth has hardly been unknown to Voltaire, but having been wood for sixteen years by the King in question, he has imagined the competition to have been settled through his arrival. Unfortunately, this turns out not to be the case, at least not as clearly cut as Voltaire would like.

For starters, there's the fact that Maupertuis is the President of the Academy, and he is not. Maupertuis also mumbles some clumsy homilies about "the late Marquise du Châtelet" and "she shall be missed", before going home to his Prussian nobility wife, but that is besides the point. Then there's Algarotti, whom Voltaire actually likes, but who has a worn out expression these days, a far cry from the dazzling young Italian who has lived for a while with Émilie and Voltaire at Cirey. Since Algarotti has been living in Prussia these last few years, and before that was gallivanting around the entire continent without a sign of exhaustion, this could be an ominous foreshadowing of things to come. Wits like D'Argens and La Mettrie are amusing to talk to, but given their respective writings never have come close to Voltaire's level, he finds it slightly disconcerting that they seem to be entitled to the same amount of the royal time as he is. And finally, there is someone who doesn't write at all, and doesn't even speak French.

"Is he still around?" Voltaire asks Algarotti about the tall good-looking man whose room at Sanssouci is next to the King's bedroom, and who has ministers and courtiers waiting for him in the antechambre as if he were Cardinal Richelieu.

Algarotti raises an eyebrow. "Why shouldn't he be?"

Voltaire indicates a shrug. "Because he's the valet? I ask you, which self respecting valet puts up with a King as disorderly as this one for more than a year?"

Algarotti duly chuckles, but says: "He was never just the valet, and you know it."

In truth, the man in question seems to hold any number of offices: valet, chamberlain, treasurer, steward of the King's household, and God knows what else. He has the thorougly German and hence unpronouncable name of Fredersdorf, and somehow, at a court where the King speaks French, the nobility speaks French, the artists speak French, and the King makes no bones of disliking the very sound of the German language, he gets away with speaking only German. To the King, no less.

Voltaire has a gift for languages. One thing the Jesuits who taught him could never fault him for was his command of Latin and Greek. He's taught himself English in a few months, back in the day, when being in exile in Britain. Picking up some German is therefore not impossible, despite the fact no one here other than the servants speaks it. The servants and Fredersdorf. Who is a servant, of sorts. What on earth would the King _talk_ to him about?

"Not that I disagree with any of this," the King observes one evening after Voltaire has just finished eviscerating the innanities of blasphemy laws everywhere, "but I do suspect your own personal deity to be Mammon, which you would never blaspheme against, and in whose service you are rather eager for a poet. I hear you've been buying Saxon government bonds."

So that was what Fredersdorf had been talking to the King about. One could add "heading the King's spy ring" to his offices, no doubt.

"A poet has to live, Sire."

Federic's eyes are glittering. "Don't I feed you enough, Monsieur? Do tell, what luxury is missing."

"The point is not a lack of money, Sire. You've been most generous. When I say "live", I do not mean "exist". A man, if he wants to respect himself, has to rely on his own wits for at least part of his income," Voltaire returns, improvising. "Besides, there's always the chance of loss when one speculates. And the thrill of it is fun. We cannot all be like you and derive such excitement from devising battle strategems."

By now, the other conversations at the King's table have ceased. Everyone is staring at the two of them. Federic's eyes had narrowed. But the amusement in his voice still outweighed the anger when he said: "Be that as it may, Monsieur, speculating with government bonds of our rival Saxony is not permitted. Now you are a foreigner, so I will grant you might not have known this. You do now. Find your thrills in other ways." The corners of his mouth twitch. "Am I not exciting enough for you?"

"Always, Sire," Voltaire says and proceeds to arrange his business affairs with even more secrecy.

* * *

VIII.

The King is actually a good musician, which is all the more remarkable since unlike most nobility which has their children taught some basic musical skills when they are young, his father famously considered such lessons to be highly treasonous, and thus Federic had to take them in secret. But he plays the flute now on a level where he could easily get hired by any court orchestra, were he not a King. One can, therefore, sincerely compliment him. The trouble is that he wishes to be a poet as well. There's nothing wrong with his taste in literature, of course, which happens to be Voltaire's; but his own products are, more often than not, less than inspiring, and there are such a lot of them. He rhymes at the drop of a hat, it seems. And it appears he thinks one of Voltaire's main purposes in life is now to smooth them into a shape deserving immortality.

"I wish he wouldn't always bring me his dirty laundry to clean," Voltaire says one day when he has to interrupt his own work, which happens to be an entirely new way of describing history by using the age of Louis XIV as an example. Unfortunately, he says this within hearing of La Mettrie, who tells Maupertuis, who tells the King. This is something Voltaire will only discover later, as the King says nothing to him about it, not directly. On the other hand, the various guests of the King's carefully selected table round suddenly all seem to know that the King has told La Mettrie he simply needs Voltaire for his exquisite French and for his knowledge. "I'll squeeze him dry like an orange," La Mettrie quotes Federic when Voltaire point blank asks him about this, "and then I'll throw away the peel."

"Well, I shall certainly regard orange peels in a new light from this day onwards," Voltaire says, affecting indifference. Inwardly, he finds himself seething. And he's only too glad to lend a hand to an old friend, König, who has tutored Émilie in mathematics such a long time ago. König has gotten into an argument with Maupertuis over some scientific issue Voltaire only half understands, but what he does recognize only too well is Maupertuis throwing his weight around. Time to cut him down to size.

"Messieurs," the King says the next time he's in the same room with Voltaire and Maupertuis, "I cannot have members of my Academy attacking each other. It won't do."

"Quite, Sire. Monsieur Maupertuis really should apologize to Monsieur König," Voltaire says blithely. Maupertuis glowers, but remains silent.

"I am talking about _your_ pamphlet, Monsieur de Voltaire," Federic says coldly. "The one you've just published under a ridiculous pseudonym. Do you truly believe I would not recognize your style?"

"Allow me to doubt you do, Sire. Given that there was this poem published under my own name a while ago which assuredly did not spring form my pen. Now I have no idea, none at all, who actually wrote it, but since I found a copy of it in the Royal Library the other day I can only assume you truly believe it to be my own work."

Abruptly, the King rises. "Tread lightly, Monsieur."

"I am such a skeleton of a man, Sire. When do I ever do anything else?"

* * *

IX.

One thing Voltaire can't complain about is lack of attention to his work in Prussia. His plays get frequently staged, both in professional theatres and at court, as they never are in Paris, courtesy of the censor. The King's siblings are as admiring of them as the King himself; the oldest sister, the Margravine of Bayreuth, has composed an opera based on his play _Semiramis_ , the younger brothers have acted in the first production of _La Rome Sauvée_ , and since as in every country, many people like what the royal family likes, it means every German count in every hovel must stage, or at least read out loud a play by Voltaire. It should make him happy. It did, in the beginning. But by now, it pales more and more against the weight of that jibe about being squeezed dry. They tell a story here in Berlin, a story which Voltaire, who does not let on how much German he has learned, now understands. The old King, the ogre, took a scholar named Gundling who used to be a respected historian before he joined that King's entourage, and turned that man into his personal court jester. He made him drink, he made him compete with the official fool, he ordered him to embrace a monkey as his son, he put him into bed with young bears once. He even made a mockery out of his funeral. No one, even now, talks of Gundling as a scholar anymore; they snigger when they mention his name.

Voltaire had always thought that Federic must be the opposite of his dead father, but now, he wonders. And he has no intention of becoming a French version of Gundling. When an anonymous pamphlet appears that defends Maupertuis and attacks him, he recognises the King's French at once, and he's hardly home in the house he's rented in Berlin before he has sat down to have another go at Maupertuis. Since the muses are talking to him, he writes a separate work directly afterwards, this one devoted exclusively to Federic himself. Clearly, the King has been asking for a reply, and Voltaire has never been one to begrudge such a devoted reader what that reader needs to hear.

"Monsieur de Voltaire," Frederdorf says, showing up, without any qualm, when Voltaire is just taking a hot bath, not in his Berlin home but in the room at Sanssouci that had been made available to him since his arrival in Prussia. "I have something which the King wishes you to sign."

He says it in German, and Voltaire says that he doesn't understand while wondering why Federic, with no shortage of French speaking nobles at his disposal, would send the sole one not familiar with the language. Then Fredersdorf says "Le roi voudrais votre signature", with a terrible accent, but he says it. It seems Voltaire has not been the only one holding out on linguistic knowledge. Mor to the point, Federsdorf, despite being fully clothed in a room full of the dampness that hot water causes, just settles down and gives every sign of not moving until he's gotten what he came for.

Voltaire gets out of his bathtub, dries himself with the towel his servants had prepared, and takes a look at the paper in question.

"I don't believe this," he says. "Your master can't be serious."

Fredersdorf looks unimpressed, does not comment, does not say anything. He just waits.

What the paper says is this: _I promise His Majesty that for all the time that he has the grace to lodge me in his palace I shall write against no man; not the government of France, against its ministers; or against other sovereigns, or against famous men of letters towards whom I shall render the respect which is due; I shall in no way abuse the letters of His Majesty; and I shall behave in a manner which is suitable for a man of letters who has the honour of being a chamberlain to His Majesty, and who lives among honest men._

The Catholic Church in France has a particularly nasty habit towards people who, like Voltaire, have written things they disapprove of. If one of them is dying, and wishes to be absolved so his body will be granted a proper funeral, they make that unfortunate soul sign a confession in which he denies anything and everything they disapprove of. If he does not do that, his body will end up being flung on a dung heap. Voltaire is reminded of this now. He's come full circle, it seems.

He signs. Of course he has no intention of keeping his word. If Federic thinks he's left his country where the censors at least know what they are reading and where the Kings are descended from Charlemagne only to let himself be dictated to by some upstart German Margrave in royal clothing who is at best a successful highwayman with literary pretensions, he's got another think coming.

* * *

X.

"Which pamphlet is this now," the King asks in a dangerously low voice. "The third? The fourth?" Voltaire looks at the _History of the Doctor Akakia_ the King is holding in front of him and shrugs.

"How should I know? Why not ask Maupertuis? It clearly hails from him. The poor dear just can't stand being deprived of attention, so he keeps publishing these things in the hopes of being pitied by your majesty."

"And I suppose Maupertuis has written the pamphlet refering to me and my brother Henri as Potsdamites as well, has he?" the King asks, expressionless.

"Not being able to see into another man's mind, Sire, I would not know."

Federic stares at him. "You could be the greatest man who ever lived, you know," he says unexpectedly, and this does take Voltaire somewhat aback. It's been a while since he has heard this kind of compliment from the King. "Your genius surpasses that of all others, dead or alive," the King continues, sounding downright sad. And then his tone hardens into steel. "But you have a rotten soul."

They look at each other, and for once, Voltaire allows some silence before he answers. He actually weighs the consequences. All these irritations aside, he's had a good life here. And right now, a return to France is not an option, not unless he 's wiling not to publish anything anymore for the rest of his life.

But he cannot make his bow and accept this judgment. Not from this man.

"Strange, Sire," he says, chosing his words very deliberately. "I have always considered us to be exactly alike."

The King's face, which gets exposed to weather on a daily basis and thus is reasonably bronzed, right now appears stark white.

"You may leave, Monsieur."

He's just referring to the room, but what Voltaire sees the next morning makes him take this permission and extend it to Prussia altogether. For the next morning, he smells smoke coming in through his window. The smoke of burning paper. He gets out of bed, opens the window and sees a small autodafé happening right in front him. He sees his own words crinkling in heat, getting eaten by flames, turning into ash.

Something in him breaks then. This is it. Never mind jokes about money and Mammon as his only God. If he believes in the sacredness of anything, it is in the sanctity of the written word. Any written word. Ridicule it, refute it, fight it, by all means. But to burn it, that is imposing the tyranny which cannot be born, not a moment longer.

* * *

XI.

In retrospect, he shouldn't have taken the King's poetry with him. Not because it is petty; because it is foolish to assume such a little thing as the law would keep Federic from getting something which he truly wants. But Voltaire wishes to make the King sweat in fear, at least a little, and taking with him the collection of poems attacking and satirizing three quarters of Europe, written in Frederic's unmistakable handwriting and with his idiosyncratic spelling, that seems perfect. Besides, there is a certain elegance to it: satires for satires. _Voltaire_ would never burn them.

He is in Frankfurt, free city of the Holy Roman Empire, the Empire which happens to be ruled by Federic's arch enemy, Maria Theresa. It never occurs to him that he might not be safe here, as he reunites with his niece. Marie-Louise would not have been welcome in Prussia any more than Émilie would have been, but he's not in Prussia any longer, he's free, and here she is, and most welcome in her voluptuous femininity after three years of Potsdamites surrounding him. Their relationship had taken a romantic turn some years ago, which he refuses to feel guilt for; Marie-Louise had been a widow in her early thirties when it happened, and quite able to decide for herself what she wanted. Not that he currently wants more than being held with some tenderness; he's quite exhausted from his Prussian troubles.

Only his troubles follow him to Frankfurt. The Prussian resident dares to show up with some soldiers to arrest him, has his luggage searched, and, not finding the wretched volume of poetry in it because is still en route with the rest of Voltaire's luggage from Leipzig, keeps Voltaire and Marie-Louise locked in an inn. Not even the one they had actually chosen to lodge in, another one that could be controled more easily by Prussian soldiers. It is beyond outrageous.

"Well," Marie-Louise says bitterly, "you did say he was a glorified highwayman."

She's a French citizen who has never as much as heard the King of Prussia's poetry, let alone seen it, and he doesn't want to think about the fact that she spends her nights alone in a room with Prussian thugs outside. When the volume of mediocre satiric verses finally arrives with the rest of his belongings and he hands it over to the Prussian resident, the man has the gall to keep part of his money to cover the cost for the imprisonment. Voltaire wants to sue, but Marie-Louise talks him out of it.

"I only want to leave," she says. "Just promise me you will never go near that man again."

"Gladly. I wish there was a hell so he could burn it it."

"You won't forgive him, will you?" she ask with a frown, as if she hasn't understood what he's just told her.

"Forgive him? I hate him more than anyone else in the world!" he exclaims.

"I was afraid of that," Marie-Louise says, but refuses to explain herself further.

* * *

XII.

Years pass in which he does not hear from the King of Prussia again. Well, not directly. He does get visited by the Margravine of Bayreuth when she travels through France, for her health, or so she says . He has never flirted with her as he has with her younger sister, but she has been his favourite among the siblings, a woman with the King's taste and wit, but without the cruelty. Or if she has it, she has learned to hide it. But then, she is a woman. They learn early to channel their fury in different ways if they want to survive.

"Brother Voltaire," she says, "it is good to see you."

"And you, Madame."

She's started to call him "brother" because she says that he, the Church's avowed enemy, resembled a Carthusian monk, but the appellation has changed its meaning during the time they've known each other.

"You know the King misses you," she observes. Out of respect for her sisterly feelings, he refrains from pointing out that the King could be on fire, and he would not piss on the flames.

"He has more than enough court jesters to squeeze dry," he says instead.

"You know you were never that. He loves you. You have no idea what your books have meant to him, to both of us, when we were reading them in secret while we were young."

"That is not love, Sister Wilhelmine," he retorts. "It is sentiment and nostalgia. In any case, he's free to read my books now, as much as ever."

She shakes her head. When she was younger, there was more of a physical resemblance between her and her brother. It is less noticable now, but on the other hand, their voices are so much alike, that Brandenburgian French, and the odd mixture of mockery and affection that Federic showed before things went irrevocably sour.

"Considering none in our family excel at forgiveness, it is good that this is not what is asked for," she says. "On anyone's side. But you might consider writing him again, or else he will believe that you are too afraid of giving in when you do that."

"You, Madame, are far too transparent for a member of your house," Voltaire says, but he finds he says it with a smile. Because he wants to be polite to her. For no other reason.

* * *

XIII.

He does not write to the King of Prussia then. Pride still is stronger, and besides, why destroy the illusion of the bastard actually missing him, and getting bored to death by the likes of Maupertuis? Voltaire isn't the only one who has fled. So, much more tactfully, has Algarotti. No surprise there. Algarotti might like to be liked, but he, too, in the end is not a nature that can bear tyranny. Even if the Margravine is right, the King is a despot, will always be a despot. It is not in him to be anything else. And as a despot, he will die surrounded only by underlings, in a loneliness of his own creation. It is no more than he deserves, thinks Voltaire, and clings to his decision until Europe is at war again, much worse than it was before. Now everyone is aligned against the King of Prussia, it seems, everyone but Britain, and the English only are on his side because they are simultanously fighting the French in their overseas colonies.

The first few battles go well for the King, who starts off the war with an invasion, because of course he does. But then, for the first time, he starts to suffer significant defeats. And it becomes clear he is not, after all, Alexander, to whom this never happened. He can die, at any moment.

_Write to my brother, I beg you,_ says the latest letter from the Margravine, which also includes the information that she herself is sick. Voltaire decides that a letter to the King now does not break the promise he has made to Marie-Louise. It will not be about forgiveness. But in the interest of saving hundreds of lives, he might as well try to strike up a written conversation with his Prussian robber that could, possibly, lead to peace between Prussia and France at least in the further future.

He cannot deny a certain - curiosity, a distant curiosity, of course, a most clinical curiosity as to how the man might be doing now that the number of people wanting to kill him had risen to thousands from most nations. So it is with some - clinical, detached - sense of anticipation he opens the first letter he gets. Naturally, it does not contain an apology. That would be too human for Federic. Instead, he seems to expect being cheered out of the doldrums in which the realisation of just how enormous his current misfortune is have left him. He even talks of seeking death. Normally, Voltaire would dismiss such posturing, but the fact of the matter is that the man is currently regularly getting shot at, wich makes it quite easy for him to die if he truly chooses to. Which would be far too easy an escape, given the mess he's currently brought the world to. Before he can stop himself, Voltaire writes back: _You want to die. I won't speak to you of the painful horror this plan inflicts. Let me instead add that nobody will regard you as freedom's martyr. You have to do justice to yourself; you know how many courts insist on regarding your invasion of Saxony as a violation of international law. What will people at these courts say? That you have avenged this invasion at yourself, that the grief to have acted against the law overwhelmed you. Do you want that? I, too, would have been in a mood to die when I lost my country because of you and my niece was dragged through the streets of Frankfurt on your orders. A man feels that he doesn't want to be humiliated by personal enemies. So he makes that decision out of hurt, desperate vanity. Follow instead your superior reason despite such feelings; your reason will tell you you've not been humiliated and that you never can be; it tells you that you are a man like any other who even in the worst of circumstances will keep what makes other people happy: wealth, office, dignity, friends. Can you truly claim to be a philosopher if you couldn't live as a private citizen or if you, a former sovereign, could not bear anyone opposing you? I am sixty five years old; I was born ill; I only have but one more moment to live; I was very unhappy, as you know; but I would die happily if I could leave you back alive on this earth and if you only practiced what you have so often written about._

That should do it, Voltaire thinks. Not that he truly cares, not really. He is an inventor, after all. Words are his breath and life. He has conjured a self to write these letters, in the larger interests of humanity, a self that does care, and this artificial creation corresponds with Federic while Voltaire has the liberty of imagining him humbled, as he deserves to be. Defeated, preferably. Maybe even imprisoned. Just not dead.

* * *

XIV.

The King keeps writing to him. At first in a secretary's hand. Then in his own; you can tell by the spelling. He wages war against four European nations and somehow, some lost battles not withstanding, keeps avoiding defeat, even stunning the world with the occasionally very glorious and very bloody victory against overwhelming odds. And while he does that, he keeps writing to Voltaire, resentful, sarcastic, sometimes gloating in victory and sometimes back to wishing himself dead. He even sends his poetry again, his satirizing poetry, because the man never learns.

When his sister the Margravine dies, he wants poetry in return. Not just any. Immortal poetry, he demands. _All of Europe needs to cry with me for a virtuous woman far too little known,_ he writes, and: _Pray for peace, but unless victory would give her back to me, neither peace nor victory nor anything in this universe could soothe the pain which eats me up inside_.

Voltaire tries, and finds himself defeated. Not because he does not mourn for the Margravine. _Sister Wilhelmine,_ he thinks _; _the world is poorer now without you_. _But for the first time, he fails at a task demanded of him as a writer. What he produces is not bad, not exactly, but it is barren, it is a mourning ode observing all the poetical rules that does not provide a sense of who the dead woman has been. Not that he owes her brother anything. Even leaving the shame of Frankfurt aside, the King has not had any sympathy when Émilie had died, has valued her as little in death as he had in life, and now he is busy putting a lot of other people's brothers and sisters into early graves, and wants Europe to cry for his? The callous arrogance of it is truly astounding.

And yet: Voltaire should have been able to rise to the task. For the sake of the dead woman, at least, who visited him when she had no reason to and every reason not to, given he had published a pamphlet exposing not just her brother but her family's dirty secrets to the world, and she knew it. And yet, that last time he'd seen her alive, there had been nothing but fondness in her eyes, not the patronizing kind a noble had for a court jester, but the clear eyed view of a friend.

Sister Wilhelmine. The sense of failing her is what keeps him writing to her brother even after it becomes clear that the King of Prussia has no intention, no matter in which mood Voltaire's letters find him, to make peace if it demands any concession of his precious conquered Silesia at all. There is something truly amazing in such endurance, and something terrifying.

"There's another letter," Marie-Louise says, who of course recognizes the handwriting by now, having had to put up with humiliation in Frankfurt for the sake of some lines in it. "You haven't forgiven him, have you?"

"I have not," he replies, truthfully, for however he feels about Federic right now, forgiving it is not.

"Then have you considered just not writing back?"

"No," he sighs. "No, I am afraid I cannot do that any longer, my dear."

* * *

XV.

The world turns, and turns, much as the Church would once have had you believing it does not, and Voltaire finds that Ferney, the Swiss estate where he has settled down has in fact become a home where he is happy to be. The French border is near, which makes it easy for visitors from his own country to come to him. The border to the next German state, well, it is not that far, either.

The King has won his war. All seven years of it. He says Voltaire would not recognize him now, not anymore; he has become an old man before his time. But he has won, in as much as he's still there, with the same borders he has had when all this started, and now he tries to rebuild the country that is left. Voltaire looks at the strokes on paper, as firm as ever, and very much doubts he would not recognize their writer.

He tries to remember Frankfurt, tries to remember the smell of burned paper coming in through his window at Sanssouci. Sometimes, this is no effort as all, and he is furious again, going back to the memoirs he's written which will be published only after he is dead, adding one more malicious bonmot at Federic's expense. At other times, he wonders: would it be truly so terrible they were to meet again? Not in Prussia, of course. He will never, ever, put himself into the King's power again. But here in Switzerland, maybe. If only to have the one conversation they were never able to have, that between two equals, neither of them given any weapons but those of the mind.

And heart. That, too. His secretary, his doctor, the peasants of his estate whose life he has improved by paying them a decent salary and creating a reasonable working schedule instead of the exploitation that they were used to, al these are pleasant enough company, and Marie-Louise is herself. But that is warmth of a sensible nature, like the glow from a safely secured fireplace. Yet twice in his life, he has touched fire itself.

_You never understood what fire was,_ Émilie's voice in his mind tells him. _Let me go through the calculations for you again.  
If you would, my dear. If only you would. And could. _

But she is dead. His other fire still burns. He is not the prince to make the world a peaceful paradise, as Voltaire once had thought he might be, but the truth is, he might have honored and respected that man, and he would have been able to leave him behind, with the best of wishes. He would have been able to keep him out of his dreams, and neither hated or loved him with any passion at all. One day, he finds himself writing to Federic: _I admit to be very rich, very independent and very happy; but you are the one thing I am missing in my happiness, and soon I will die without having seen you again; you hardly care, and I try to work on not caring, either. I love your verses, your prose, your esprit, your bold and firm mind. I couldn't live without you, nor with you. I do not speak to the King right now, to the hero, that is the business of monarchs. I speak to the one who has bewitched me, whom I have loved and who never ceases to infuriate me._

He doesn't have to wait long for his answer. _You are indeed a unique creature; whenever I want to be angry with you, you speak two words to me, and my accusations die in the tip of my pen. I know very well I have adored you for as long as I didn't regard you as a pest and a villain; but you have played so many dirty tricks on me - but let's no longer talk about this; I have forgiven you everything in my Christian heart. All in all, you've provided me with more joy than grief. I take more enjoyment in your works and only feel a little of the scratches. If you didn't have any flaws, you could make the human species look far too inferior, and the universe would have good cause to be envious of your qualities. As it is, one can say: Voltaire is the most beautiful genius of all centuries, but I am at least more calm, more agreeable and more soft hearted than he is. And this comforts a common man over the fact of your existence._

* * *

XVI.

It begins and ends with letters, because of course it does. More than forty years now since the first of them has arrived. Voltaire is where he never thought he would be again: not in Prussia, but in Paris, where he was born. They have invited him here, and pondering the invitation, he knows that if he goes, he will in all likelihood never return to Ferney. He is over eighty years now, and while he has held off death for decades, the poor machine that is the human body in age really won't be able to put up with twice such a journey.

He has a choice, then. Live a few years longer in happy retirement and peace, or return to the city of cities, where they will stage the latest of his plays, where the Academie Francaise, which once did not want him, will make him their honorary head. The city which has created him, more than any other place on earth. The city still ruled by laws that demand that if he dies there, without repentance, without signing his every conviction away, his dead body will be treated like an animal's.

There is no question as to which choice his most enduring correspondant would make. _But are your battles not all the same,_ Voltaire has once asked him. _Aren't you in a rage when you fight?  
No, _Federic had replied. _That's when you need tranquility the most._

Tranquility indeed, Sire. I am utterly tranquil now as I contemplate seeking one last fight at the place where I was born. In my end is my beginning. You know what the only thing more sensational than the conversion of a life long sinner will be? The utter failure at it. And a man should die in a way that allows him to mortify his enemies beyond endurance. If he can do so in a way that also allows him to cover himself in glory and adoration before he goes, all the better. I think I understand you know, Sire. I think I might always have done.

There is a letter for him, waiting in Paris. Along with flowers thrown at his feet, threehundred people a day who wish to see him and drive Marie-Louise to tears with the eagerness to get a word from Monsieur de Voltaire, and the breath of death he can feel at his neck, even while he smiles at the priests watching him pass by.

_I am content,_ Federic writes, _I am content to have lived in the age of Voltaire._

**Author's Note:**

> Voltaire died in Paris, his city of birth, after his triumphant return on May 30th 1778. His death was, like his life, [a hugely controversial and much debated spectacle](https://rheinsberg.dreamwidth.org/1205.html#cutid4). Frederick the Great honored him with a speech to the Academy in Berlin, which also paid tribute, in a first for Frederick, to Voltaire's relationship with Émilie du Chatelet and to Émilie as a scientist. 
> 
> All letters quoted in this story are authentic.


End file.
